Show Norquay the Amenities!
BLOG POST posted on Février 16, 2011 by Joseph Jones
Norquay Open Houses on Feb 19 and 21, 2011
The launch of a new web site facilitates this backgrounder on Norquay Open Houses scheduled for Saturday February 19 and Monday February 21. [For context see the City of Vancouver brochure and the 4 November 2010 report to City Council.]
creates a space for an ongoing community-based electronic forum. It also pulls together a lot of material that has been disorganized and buried in emails: What Norquay is and why Norquay matters, a full chronology 1995 to present, recent media coverage, research produced by Norquay, key documents, maps, links to relevant web sites. More will be added.
The current posting – Show Norquay the Amenities! – seeks the greatest possible payback to Norquay for the "planning" that Council and planners imposed on Norquay in November. Read this posting as background, plan to attend one of the Open Houses, and do not allow planners to gallop forward over the wreckage of our hopes for the community. Without ongoing community scrutiny, much will be taken, with little given in return. Being told that a fourth new lead planner is about to come to Norquay is evidence enough that the only continuity is us.
Here is the introduction to Show Norquay the Amenities!
At Norquay Open Houses on Saturday February 19 and Monday February 21, city planners will consult with the area’s 10,000 residents on three done-deal “considerations” that incentivize developers
- To lob four-storey apartments into single-family neighborhoods
- To canyonize Kingsway with ten-storey condos
Although that pseudo-consultation part of the exercise is meaningless, there are at least two things that Open House visitors might achieve. One is to insist that an attempt to beautify the median of Kingsway should not waste valuable pavement that could provide a bicycle lane.
The other is the subject of all the prose that follows. The Norquay Working Group identified a full-scale Community Arts Centre as the primary desired amenity. The geographic heart of East Vancouver provides an ideal location. The city already owns the land, presenting a rare opportunity. To create a neighbourhood centre literally out of nothing, a price tag of $30 to $40 million seems quite reasonable. Especially when 10,000 people already live in Norquay, and city planners are out to add even more density.
… continue on to read the rest …
— and come out to support Norquay on Feb 19 or Feb 21!
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